Rhythm Mehta, Founder

It was in the year 2014 when Rhythm Mehta was in his middle school. Sadly, once, Rhythm came across a dreadful situation where his bus got stuck in traffic due to heavy rainfall in New Delhi. This naturally delayed the normal bus timings and back home was his worried parents.Due to bad weather conditions, they couldn’t connect with the bus attendant which made it worse. This incident invokes thought in his mind. He thought to himself,‘What if my parents could know I was safe?’ He did his part of research online but didn’t find any viable solution. A couple of years later, he got to know that one junior student in his school had experienced the same. This time, well prepared, he evaluated the current solutions and consulted the school management and parents on what exactly problems do they face. Based on the results, he developed the beta version of the platform and ran demo in the school. The response was positively tremendous from the parents and school management.

“Initially, I built it for my school, but with such positive interests in a short time, I was further motivated to see the potential beyond and with no waiting, I started planning to take it from a high school project to a tech startup,” says Rhythm. This marked the beginning of yellow Ride in 2017.

"yellowRide uses a unique blend of mobile and cloud technologies to provide efficient school bus tracking simply with a smartphone and eliminates the requirement of expensive hardware"

yellowRide uses a unique blend of mobile and cloud technologies to provide efficient tracking simply with a smartphone and eliminates the requirement of expensive hardware like GPS tracker, ID scanner, and other setups. The company’s cloud platform makes it much easier to set up, operate and maintain. “Being a customer-centric company has helped us build a product that fulfilled the people’s need and solved their problem. Prior to development, current schools’ and parents’ wants were evaluated which formed the basis of the product and eventually it was further developed on that basis. We can say that it is our customers who assisted us to design the framework and in that case, it was expected to disrupt because they got what they wanted and how they wanted,” he says.

What makes the company unique

is its easy-to-use functionality – with easy installation of the app on a smartphone for schools and parents. “Parents now are aware every second about the real-time location of the school bus with functionality to check at what time plus location did their child got on or off the bus. They can know the estimated time arrival of the bus at the stop which helps them manage time. Bus attendants can quickly take attendance on the app whose records are stored on cloud accessible anytime and even send notifications to school management and parents if any concerning mishap occurs. In the end, there’s no complex hardware no expensive accessories, no yearly maintenance, no setup/one-time fees, no hidden charges but only intelligent use of technology,’ he explains.

At present, yellowRide is running trials at 21 schools across India. Further, it has been approached by schools and companies from USA, Mexico, Spain, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Nepal where it is expected to launch in a year or so.

Team yellowRide, currently, is under preparation to be launched globally and add-on new features that tackle problems irrespective of the countries so as to thrive worldwide. “We make no compromise with our service quality and we plan to keep innovating and have some new plans for yellowRide which is expected to be in the market next year,” he concludes.